New Books In Food

The Proof Is in the Dough: Rural Southern Women, Extension, and Making Money (University of Georgia Press, 2025) examines how rural white and African American women in Alabama and Florida used the Cooperative Extension Service's home demonstration programming between 1914 and 1929 as a means to earn extra income. Kathryn L. Beasley explores an area of rural women's history that has not been closely examined--that is, how rural American women involved with home demonstration used the skills they learned as a way to better themselves economically. Furthermore, Beasley traces how this extra income allowed these women to shape their own producing and consuming habits. While most home demonstration programming during the Progressive Era and 1920s focused on ways to save money--among other objectives--rural women in Alabama and Florida used different strategies to earn more money and gain some economic independence. Beasley's research shows how Alabama and Florida's rural women exercised their own determination an